ARISTOCRACY. 7
probably, as a general rule, served without salary, and hence
Aristotle advises (Pol., vii. or vi.> 4, ^ 6), that the principal
magistrates in an oligarchy should have expensive public ser-
vices (liturgite) imposed on them, so that the people should
willingly be excluded from these offices, and should not be
jealous of the holders of them, inasmuch as they had paid
high for their privilege. It would be well, also, he thinks,
that when they enter on their magistracies they should make
sacrificial feasts and build some public monument, for thus
the people, partaking of the festivities and seeing the city
adorned with statues and buildings, would desire the perma-
nence of the constitution. But this, he adds, " the oligarchs
of the present day clo not do, but rather the contrary. They
seek gnins no less than honors, for which reason it is just to
call the oligarchies democracies in the hands of a few/'
The administration of justice in the aristocratic city-states
of Greece differed from those of the democracies chiefly in
these particulars : that civil cases were decided by magistrates
without a court of judges or dicasts, and that criminal justice,
as far as crimes were concerned, was in the hands of colleges
of public officers. Murder and other crimes having a relig-
ious side, were brought before special courts. Aristotle re-
marks on the impolicy of so organizing the courts *of justice
that those who are not full citizens could serve in them, " for
by demagogy in reference to trials they [the members of the
aristocracy, when accused of crimes] change the constitution,
as happened in Heraclea of Pontus." (via, or v.> 5, $ 5.)
The Greeks of the little oligarchies strove with great good
sense to preserve the existing state of things by institutions,
especially by an education of the young, suited for this end,
But it was impossible, whenever intelligence and wealth came
in among the people, to preserve these governments from
feeling the natural causes of decay, such as the feeling of in-
feriority in those who were excluded, of bitter hatred towards
the haughty eupatrids, of decay in the number and physical
constitution of families marrying within themselves. * A time
of decay came to all of them, Aristotle me»tif us tibte dangfers